Toshiba Camileo H10 offers HD recording on the cheap
I’ve been wanting to upgrade my digital video camera for a while so if I can find the Toshiba Camileo H10 around town, I may just grab it. My current gear, an old Canon Elura model tops out with VGA recording, or 640 x 480. The Toshiba Camileo H10 offers 720p recording capability and might make a nice companion for one of our HDTVs. There’s plenty of high-def cameras out there, but here’s the kicker: Toshiba expects to out the H10 at 230 Euros. A quick to trip to Xe.com (my fave on-line currency converter) shows that to be around $358!
Product prices don’t always convert based on the currencies, but even if Toshiba ups the ante to $399, this could be a steal, pending the picture quality. For storage, the H10 offers an SDHC slot with support up to 8 GB. That’s a potential Achilles Heel here for some: depending on the compression used to store 720p video, 8 GB will offer around four hours of recording time. Maybe not a deal-breaker at this price-point, but something to keep in mind.
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Key, Kevin, a quicker way to get currency conversions into US$ is just to highlight the amount (e.g., 230 Euros) in your browser, right-click and select “Search Google for…” (I presume you’re using FireFox as you should be ;-) and Google will give you the conversion at the top of the search results page. Much quicker than going to XE.com and typing in some numbers.
I dont know, but I remember when not too long ago you needed to carry around a lot of tapes to record 4 hours of video and it wasn’t even HD. For less than $400, it’s great. I’m keeping this one on my wishlist until I can see it on a store display so I can check the quality f the camera.
…just make sure that your laptop/notebook/umpc processor can handle the recorded mp4 files good enough, otherwise you will see some very ugly slow motion clips – something i wasn’t aware of when i bought the sanyo xacti. you better try before you buy! cheers, lutz
Hmmm wonder why it’s capped at 8Gb, if indeed it is? If it supports the SDHC standard then it should only be limited by the size of card available, not the other way round!
I’m curious to learn more about this camera, but it’s hard to conclude anything from the brief description. This could be just a basic camera with a high-pixel-count sensor. An $80 webcam can capture “HD” resolution, but the results cren’t necessarily very high quality.
What other cameras are you considering, Kevin? I’d recommend getting something that saves richer color data, even at the expense of pixel resolution. An HDMI port upsteam of the compression chip is another feature worth having.
Nomo, I have to replenish my gadget budget before I do the HD upgrade. I grabbed a Canon EOS Rebel XSi about a month ago, so I’m still research (and saving). There’s a new Xacti out that I may look into but the field is wide open while I save up.
Don’t get to excited about this one everyone; it’s a rebadge. More details at http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcorders/news/2008/07/29/Toshiba-Launches-Sub—200-HD-Camcorder/comments